The Enid Blyton Society

My own children did similar things and played plenty of games using their imaginations but they're now 22 and 17 so I don't know whether that still applies to today's youngsters. I hope so, though! Newspaper articles sometimes give the impression that screens have taken over children's lives and that even children as young as five or six have their own tablets or mobile phones, but I can't help thinking they're exaggerating. It's more likely that children are allowed to use their parents' devices once in a while, under supervision and for a restricted length of time, to access material suitable for their age. And some of that material might well inspire crafts or outdoor play, as many of the TV programmes we watched did!

Anita Bensoussane wrote: I can't help thinking they're exaggerating. It's more likely that children are allowed to use their parents' devices once in a while, under supervision and for a restricted length of time, to access material suitable for their age. And some of that material might well inspire crafts or outdoor play, as many of the TV programmes we watched did!

I hope they are exaggerating, as it would be a real shame if children stopped using their imaginations. Sometimes, when thinking back to what my friends and me and my sister used to do as children, its hard to imagine that some things were only pretend - like hiding from robbers in our tree house, or living in 'the wilderness' for a week or riding horses, or on a ghost train, or on safari, or having super powers or being 'bionic'! Most of our childhood was filled with fantasy!

I think, as always, it all comes down to the parents. If children have parents who encourage imaginative play and don't just take 'the easy option' regards TV and other devices, then a child will use its imagination instead. I worry, looking at my nephew (aged just two) and hearing his mother say he gets easily 'bored'. Bored at 2?! What hope has he got?! I don't think I ever felt bored until I was at least 14!

Rob Houghton wrote: Yeah - I can see why your parents weren't sure about a space hopper, given that story!

On the other hand I agree with Courtenay (and you) that a Space Hopper would have been a lot safer than a pogo-stick. I had a try of my sister's friend's pogo-stick once when I was about 7. I jumped on, banged my chin on the handlebars and promptly fell off! I was quite happy to stick to my space-hopper after that!

For the brief attempt I had, I found a pogo-stick incredibly difficult to use. I remember trying to prop myself up against a wall to stay upright on it, but the second I moved from the wall I lost my balance, toppled sideways and it skidded from under me!

Anita Bensoussane wrote:A lovely website. My sister and I had a couple of fuzzy-felt sets but our favourite was 'Fantasy' (shown in this link if you scroll down):

http://www.ghostofthedoll.co.uk/fuzzyfelt-shapes.php" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;

The Fantasy one is lovely, it looks like there was a lot of pieces in that one. Some of those sets look very familiar, especially the horses, hospital and farm ones, I think we possibly had them at school.

I liked toys that let you use your imagination more than anything as they had the most longevity and the biggest play range.

Anita Bensoussane wrote: A lovely website. My sister and I had a couple of fuzzy-felt sets but our favourite was 'Fantasy'...

Ooooooh, I would have LOVED that one! Wow!!



(We did have Fuzzy-Felt Pictures, further down at that same link, but although it was fun, the Fantasy shapes and colours are much more exciting.)

Thanks for the reminder of the Fuzzy-Felt thread, too — I remembered we had one somewhere, but had forgotten it extended to 11 pages, not all of which stayed on topic for very long!

Anita Bensoussane wrote:My own children did similar things and played plenty of games using their imaginations but they're now 22 and 17 so I don't know whether that still applies to today's youngsters. I hope so, though! Newspaper articles sometimes give the impression that screens have taken over children's lives and that even children as young as five or six have their own tablets or mobile phones, but I can't help thinking they're exaggerating. It's more likely that children are allowed to use their parents' devices once in a while, under supervision and for a restricted length of time, to access material suitable for their age. And some of that material might well inspire crafts or outdoor play, as many of the TV programmes we watched did!

Given the price of those tablets and mobile phones I would hope they are exaggerating!! Who gives a five or six year old a £500+ ipad/iphone to play with?! I do find it sad that they'd even want it to play with though, something like that wouldn't have interested me one bit. Virtual hopscotch, snakes & ladders or jigsaws wouldn't have had the slightest appeal compared to the real thing. The closest I came to wanting to live through a screen was copying various things I saw on television.

IceMaiden wrote:The closest I came to wanting to live through a screen was copying various things I saw on television.

The closest we came was to cutting a hole in a large cardboard box and drawing knobs etc then putting it over our shoulders and pretending we were reading the news on TV!

Rob Houghton wrote:The closest we came was to cutting a hole in a large cardboard box and drawing knobs etc then putting it over our shoulders and pretending we were reading the news on TV!

We did that, too!

So did my daughter and son back in the 1970s.

we sure knew how to have a good time back then, lol!

My dad always said it was pointless buying us the latest toys, because we'd usually end up playing with the boxes more often - which was kind of true!

My mom and dad always brought their weekly shopping home in cardboard boxes, which used to be offered free by the supermarket, so we often had boxes to make televisions, dolls houses, robots, cars, etc etc!

Our two grandsons, aged 8 and 5, still enjoy playing with cardboard boxes.

Oh good, I'm glad kids still do that! Don't remember ever wearing a cardboard box TV on our heads (great idea — wish we'd thought of that), but when I was about 3 years old and Gran and Grandpa bought a new electric cooker, Dad brought home the tall cardboard box it came in and turned that into a play house for my sister and me. That was fun.

Yes - I think we did that with extra big boxes!

I guess children would be less likely to associate a cardboard box with a TV nowadays, given that all TVs are flat screen TVs! A cardboard box looked more like a TV in my childhood days!

And in mine, but for some reason I don't think we ever thought of turning a cardboard box into a TV!

All this talk of cardboard boxes for televisions has reminded me of the riotously funny Tex Avery cartoon, Cellbound. That's where the prisoner tunnels out of jail, only to end up inside the warden's television set, and he has to act out these programmes such as a Western, a boxing match and a jazz band with all his props and disguises!

I wonder what today's kids would make of it?

Oh goodness that brings back memories - cardboard boxes free with the shopping! Does anyone remember Kwik-Save? They always had piles of boxes in a heap at the end of the till (at least ours did) and if you were unlucky all that was left were the fruit boxes with a big hole right where you wanted to put your groceries . The really big boxes made a wonderful play house or a boat. I used to spread a big blue towel or sheet on the floor, put the box on it and pretend I was sailing to Kirrin Island, using two bats for oars, and I even made a 'treasure map' stained with coffee to look old which I still have somewhere in the loft! You couldn't do anything like that with a biodegradable plastic bag .